Gordon Brown is very popular with Europe’s politicians – the same cannot be
said for David Cameron's team, reports Simon Heffer.

The latest turning-point in our country’s relationship with the European Union came in a coach museum in Lisbon on December 13 2007. It was not so much that that was the time, and the place, where Gordon Brown signed the Treaty of Lisbon, and with it signalled his willingness to cede more sovereignty to the EU; it was that, after much dithering about whether to attend the signing ceremony at all, he turned up late. He missed the main ceremony, in which the other 26 heads of government signed the document in a late mediaeval monastery before embarking on a typically strenuous celebration lunch. By the time Mr Brown turned up, some of his confrères had already gone home.

Next day, the Prime Minister was savaged by the British press, ridiculed by some of the foreign media, and abused by William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary. According to diplomats, however, this caused something to happen to Mr Brown that appears to be almost unique in the history of a character who cannot admit error or be seen to change his mind: he suddenly started to bend over backwards to be part of the European process, to be courteous to his fellow leaders, and to try to play a leading part in that process himself.

No one seems quite sure what happened to effect this change. It may have been that senior figures in his own party, including David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, expressed their anger at the embarrassment he had caused by his behaviour, both to the Labour Government and to the country. It may have been that senior diplomats in the Foreign Office and in the capitals of Europe made it unequivocally clear how impossible such conduct made their already difficult jobs, and how it was causing such influence as Britain had in Europe to haemorrhage away. Or, as most of the diplomats to whom I have just spoken on a tour round some European capitals have suggested to me, the shock of uniformly appalling headlines might have been enough to cause Mr Brown to sharpen up his act without any prompting.

His failure to attend the ceremony was routinely described as “cowardly”. He knew that the Lisbon Treaty, because of the powers it handed over to Brussels, was seriously unpopular in Britain. He knew that were he to have honoured the Government’s pledge to hold a referendum on it, there wasn’t a prayer of it being approved. He therefore had to engage in the untruth that the treaty was not substantially the same document as the already-rejected constitution, even though the architect of the process, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, was going around innocently, and accurately, saying that it was. This was the excuse not to have the referendum. Fearing the damage that would be done to him for signing it, Mr Brown then engaged in his display of indifference towards it. This simply made everyone, not just the Euro-sceptics, condemn him.

However, nearly two years later, Europe loves Gordon Brown. He has good relations with most of its leaders, and especially with those who matter most. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, takes him seriously and Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, sees and talks to him often.

Whereas America has written Mr Brown off – the White House gives the impression of simply marking time until there is a new prime minister in post with whom they will have to deal – in Europe he remains a player. “They respect him for what he did during the financial crisis last autumn,” one diplomat told me this week. “They really didn’t know what to do: he had a plan. Things calmed down. He still gets credit for that.”

Mr Brown is also an effective negotiator, something he has had to learn quickly. When he was Chancellor of the Exchequer he could barely bring himself to attend meetings of European finance ministers. It was felt that his own views on economic matters were so rigid that he could barely be interested in the views of his counterparts, unless they happened to agree with his. His scepticism about the euro has long been well-known. He looked towards Alan Greenspan, then head of America’s Federal Reserve Bank, for guidance, not towards Frankfurt. Unfortunately, it was Mr Greenspan’s promiscuity on first Bill Clinton’s, and then George Bush’s, behalf with the American money supply, and Mr Brown’s imitation of that, that caused so many problems for our economy.

However, Mr Brown no longer adopts the same tactics with his fellow heads of government. He does engage with them; he does listen to them, or at least make a show of listening. And when he has to press a point, he presses it with his customary insistence, usually to the point where others give up and give in. “That,” as a long-serving diplomat pointed out to me, with approval, “makes him a successful negotiator.”

So, for the moment, matters are calm in Anglo-European relations. The prospect of David Cameron taking over from Mr Brown at some point in the next few months may well change things. Some diplomats foresee possible difficulties for the Tories on several fronts. First, it is perceived by continental politicians that neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Hague is especially interested in Europe: America seems to be their first priority. “What they don’t seem to get,” one diplomat told me, “is that our country’s value to America is as their interpreters towards the Europeans. If a Conservative government is held in distrust in Europe, America has no need to bother with them. When they need to talk to Sarkozy or Merkel or Barroso, they will just go direct.”

Second, the Conservatives’ decision to leave the European People’s Party in the European Parliament has damaged their reputation with the ruling parties in several countries who are also members. “They claimed they were getting out not least because some of the parties in it were supporters of the Lisbon Treaty,” another diplomat told me. “They are now in a largely irrelevant grouping with other people, some of whom support Lisbon, and have lost enormous clout in the process.”

Third, there is irritation that some senior Conservatives seem not to understand what the Lisbon Treaty really means. “It can’t be torn up once it’s ratified,” says one official close to the process. “Its powers are consolidated into the treaty that is the basis of the whole EU. If the Tories want to extract Britain from Lisbon’s effects, then they have to take us out of the EU.”

Fourth, there is impatience among European politicians at the use by some Tories of the notion of a “renegotiation” of our terms of membership of the EU. Diplomats understand that this, like the promise to leave the EPP, was forced on Mr Cameron in 2005 when he sought the votes of Right-wingers in the parliamentary party as part of his leadership challenge.

“However, it’s unworkable,” I was told. “A renegotiation requires the other 26 to sit down and renegotiate too. They won’t. There’s agreement in Brussels that the period of treaty-making is, for the moment, over. Now they are just going to get on with running the show. It might be 10 or even 20 years before any further reforms are proposed. There’s nothing the Tories can do about that.”

Officials expect that Mr Cameron and Mr Hague are aware of this, though they will be watching with interest the election campaign when it comes, and listening out for the tone of the rhetoric. If Ireland rejects Lisbon on October 2, the treaty will be dead – “there simply can’t, won’t, be a third referendum” a diplomat told me, so Mr Cameron will be spared having to worry about how to implement it.

If it is enforced, then officials are anxious to explain to him that he will have to make the best of it. “Tony Blair may well be President. There will be a high representative for foreign affairs, who won’t be British. Britain will have to work to ensure there aren’t any great divergences in foreign policy, and that will best be done by accepting what has happened and working with it.”

The belief is that Mr Cameron already knows the realities of what Irish and Czech ratification of Lisbon will mean for a Tory government, but it will serve no electoral purpose for him to admit to them in an election campaign. Instead, the vague rhetoric about not letting matters rest, or renegotiating, will be pushed out to keep the Right happy.

It is likely that within days of his becoming prime minister – if that is indeed what happens – the Foreign Office will tell him that his choice is to stay in or get out, and that the most he can honestly offer the British people is a promise that any further attempts to erode sovereignty will be resisted firmly. Europe accepts that entry to the euro is not an issue, and will not be one under a Tory government. Also, as a senior diplomat put it to me, “the march to federalism has stopped”.

Should he become prime minister, therefore, it should be easier for Mr Cameron to avoid confrontations and difficulties with his fellow heads of government than it has been for any British leader since Edward Heath – not least because the pass has already been sold. That is, of course, if his party will let him.